Julie Barrett's Blog

I've been out of town for the past few days, and a few items of interest kind of congealed to form the basis for this post. Let's look at the items first, shall we?

MWA Delists Harlequin. (Via Lee Goldberg)

The kicker for me is that Harlequin continues to think there's no problem with sending rejected writers to Dellarte Press. As Goldberg points out in the comments, when Random House owned a piece of Xlibris they kept it separate and never suggested to rejected authors that they might want to...

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Even in Tucson, things can get a bit chilly on December nights. What is your favorite way to keep warm?

Sometimes procrastination is a good thing. I've been swamped this week, but I woke up to this:



We had about a quarter of an inch of snow sticking to the ground before it stopped. It never got below 35F, so there was no danger of the roads freezing.

This is the first cold snap we've had this fall. Last night a cold rain fell, and I was simply cold and miserable. About 7:30 last night I gave up...

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Yes, we did jump in and start cleaning in the home office today. That's a story for later, but I think I may post a few pictures along the way of items we've uncovered. This is like an archaeological expedition. How could such a small closet be so stuffed?

I found a framed copy of my first pro sale - an article for a computer magazine. I need to scan and preserve that. But I also found this:



I was the winner of the first ever 1st Bangalore Pioneers (they were a Sherlockian society) Crime Conte...

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Yep, we went out and did a little Black Friday shopping today. We weren't really expecting to buy anything. I mean, when you go shopping at 1:00 the bargains are all gone. It was more of an excuse to get out of the house. though I did find one thing - a Huey Pro monitor calibration system. It was an open box deal and less than I paid for the standard Huey. Now I can calibrate both monitors. Eeee!

Also grabbed a few things at the grocery store. Hey, that's the place to be on the day after Thank...

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What
aspect of living in the 21st century are you most thankful about? I'm
talking technology, medical breakthroughs, favorite tv shows, even
people and pets born since the ball drop of nine years ago.

I'm pretty darned thankful for the technology that allows me to work at home. Now if the economy would just cooperate...

Well, this is amusing. As I was working on this blog post the doorbell rang. UPS delivered us a new router! It's a good thing I wasn't working today, which is precisely ...

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After all the ranting about Harlequin Horizons I did earlier in the week, I thought it would be a good idea to take a couple of steps back and talk about expectations.

Through this blog and the SF conventions I attend I encounter quite a few writers who are either self-published or vanity-published. Or vanity-pubbed who think they've self-published. I also meet many people who are with legitimate small presses. Most of them - thanks to their publishers being up-front with things - have realist...

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(Warning: Rambling, ranty post ahead.)

All this brouhaha over the Harlequin Horizons venture got me to thinking about how writers and other creatives are treated in this world. The tipping point for this rant was from Harlequin's own statement today (reprinted at Agent Kristen's blog). Here's the line that got me:

It is disappointing that the RWA has not recognized that publishing models have and will continue to change.

Publishing models will continue to change, but Yog's Law doesn't.

Writers a...

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A while back I blogged about the options the school district was considering for realigning schools. I expressed concerns about students in this neighborhood who didn't have transportation to a more distant high school. The district offers bus service, but if a student wants to participate in extracurricular activities or some tutoring plans, their family is responsible for transportation. People like me were told to suck it up. We'd have two great schools on the east side under the "balanced...

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Yesterday Harlequin unveiled a new self-publishing venture called Harlequin Horizons. This is a partnership with Author Solutions, parent of AuthorHouse, Xlibris, iUniverse, and other ventures. The press release announcing the new venture is here.

This announcement has generated a lot of discussion, some of which I'll round up at the end of the post. One of he most interesting is over at Dear Author, where Harlequin's Malle Vallik answers some questions about the venture.

Quoting from the...

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Where did the warm weather go? Our first major cold front of the year hit yesterday. Woah!

Paul is on a plane as I type, heading to LA for the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference. I'm watching some of the tweets, and they'd be easy to follow if the spammers would just get off the #pdc hashtag.

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue started another run today on Radio 4. Much rejoicing.

We watched the first episode of the remake of "The Prisoner" last night. I wanted so much to like it. I tried to li...

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